Truth Beauty Good

Truth, Beauty, and the Good .. or also its variant Wisdom, Beauty and Strength or Power .. are three virtues to be loved and lived by Man using its Human 'I' consciousness to develop its lower bodies and ennoble the lower bodily principled, transforming them into the higher bodily principles of Man's higher triad. See the schemas below for correspondence to the different planes or worlds of consciousness, and the Thinking Feeling Willing faculties of the Human I.

Truth Beauty Good can thus be seen as a simple 'shorthand' moral compass. It was and is still used in rosecrucian teachings as well as in freemasonry.

These three faculties are developed in the sciences (thinking, wisdom, truth), the arts (the beautiful), and actions whereby virtues are lived through the power of inner strength and human will. They support the overcoming and ennobling of the lower bodily principles and transformation to the higher principles, elevating the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms.

Aspects

• Man creates Truth-Beauty-Good through the Thinking Feeling Willing (TFW) faculties of the human 'I': Truth-Beauty-Good are created in the maya reality ‘semblance’ of the cosmic fractal on Earth where the Thinking Feeling Willing (TFW) faculties of I-consciousness allow us to signify a reality, but is not a reality (1922-12-16-GA219)
• in the Legend of the Molten sea, the Golden Triangle consists of the higher bodily principles of Man's higher triad with correspondence to wisdom, beauty and power (manas, budhi, atma).
• in the three steps of Man's transformation and spiritualization whereby Man transforms the astral, etheric and physical bodies into the spiritual components of Man's higher triad .. Rudolf Steiner connects wisdom to the transformation of the astral body into spirit-self, beauty to the transformation of the etheric body into life-spirit, and power to the transformation of the physical body into spirit-man (1906-05-06-GA266)
• Overview Schemas
  • evolutionary perspective: Schema FMC00.066
  • elementals: Schema FMC00.262 and Schema FMC00.521 right
  • link to the worlds and Man's soul faculties and bodily principles: Schema FMC00.213 and Schema FMC00.519
• see also:
  • in 1912-12-17-GA143 (Love and its meaning in the world), love is compared to two other powers in the world: power (or strength, might) and wisdom.
• note: Rudolf Steiner used both 'Truth Beauty Good' (Schema FMC00.521) as 'Wisdom, Beauty, Strength or Power' (Schema FMC00.519), the specific lecture references are on the two Schemas where the two have been separated for clarity of reference.

Inspirational quotes

Bible - Book of Ecclesiastes

Eccl. 7:12 For wisdom is a shelter (alt translation: defense).

1911-11-30-GA127

If a person makes a mistake or tells a lie, even if he is not aware of it with his ordinary waking consciousness, then it is still present in the subconscious, where it works as a destructive force, not only for the individual concerned but also for the development of the whole of mankind. Similarly, if a person binds him or herself to the forces of truth, it works as a life-giving power for all of humanity and the development of the world.

Illustrations

Schema FMC00.213 relates Thinking Feeling Willing (TFW) activities of the human soul to the three worlds and Truth Beauty Good (TBG).

Schema FMC00.519 references some lectures by Rudolf Steiner covering Wisdom, Beauty and Strength (or Power) as used for centuries and up to today in both rosecrucian teachings and freemasonry.

Schema FMC00.521 links Truth, Beauty and the Good (TBG) to Man's developmental past and future, with reference to the lecture with an extensive description of the underlying elemental beings (see also Schema FMC00.262)

Schema FMC00.262 shows how morality streams into the human being (right), see also Moral ideals and Human character - the I and threefold soul

Schema FMC00.066 shows the appearance and disapperance of the Man's bodily principles during the different planetary stages and Conditions of Cosciousnessness (CoC), and how they serve the development of the main virtues.

Lecture coverage and references

1905-10-10-GA093A

Note: this lecture contains a mapping to the development of the etheric, astral body and I .. which has not been included in Schema FMC00.519. Instead the description of 1906-05-06-GA266 was included.

Three separate concepts have always comprised what, coming from outside, education on the physical plane should bring about in the three different bodies of man. These three aspects were called: Wisdom, Beauty and Power or Strength.

When in the outer court of the more exoteric Rosicrucian schools the pupils received instruction, they were told:

‘You are to be the workers of the future.’

Nothing was said about reincarnation. But the human being would also continue to work when not incarnated again in the physical body. The teaching implanted in them what should in the future work formatively upon the organs. It was said to the pupils:

‘Lead in your daily life in the outer world, a life of Wisdom, Beauty and Power, then in your higher bodies you will develop those organs which are for the future.’

In Freemasonry today, the masons of St. John still speak of the great importance of Wisdom, Beauty and Power, but they no longer know that thereby formative forces work on the etheric body, the astral body and the ego.

When in the Middle Ages a Freemason master builder built a cathedral or a church, his name was of absolutely no importance. He himself remained in the background. In the case of the ‘Theologia deutsch’ also, and for the same reason, the name of the author was not mentioned. He calls himself ‘the Frankfurter’. No amount of learned research can discover the name. The aim of these men was to work outwardly on the physical plane, leaving no trace of their names behind them, but only the fruits of their activity.

Let us suppose that someone had given the design and the impulse for the building of a great cathedral. He knew that the forms of the building would create in him an organ for the future. All such works will, in their effects, remain connected with the inmost part of the soul. As a rule however all these works in the outer world remain until he who created them finds them again and recognises them when he returns. Under the pulpit there is usually to be found a small picture of the architect; from this he recognises himself again. This is the bridge which is thrown from one incarnation to another.

Through Wisdom the etheric body was to be developed, through Beauty, to which piety belonged, the astral body, and through Power the individual I.

The human being had to become a self-effacing imprint of the outer world. In ancient India nothing of this was yet known. Brahmanism aimed at a perfecting of the self in the inner life ... [Gap in text ...] ... But just in the middle of our Post-Atlantean epoch there appeared those teachers of religion who drew attention to the renunciation of the self. This was already taught by Buddha. It was developed still more intensively in the West through Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism. They sought the perfecting of the I in the form that is also in the outer world, not so much in the inner life as this was cultivated in India. It was in this sense that the western occultist said to himself:

‘Thine I is not only within thyself, but in the world around thee. The Gods have raised thee out of the mineral kingdom, out of the plant and animal kingdoms; but three kingdoms thou createst for thyself, the three kingdoms of Wisdom, Beauty and Power. These develop the organs of the higher man.’

The human being said to himself:

‘I stand here as the end result of a time when the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms sacrificed themselves for me; out of this foundation arose self-awareness, the I. And just as the I has been formed through these other kingdoms, so must it now itself develop the kingdoms of Wisdom, Beauty and Strength, in order by their means to mount still higher to a complete transformation of our etheric, astral and I bodies.’

These three kingdoms are the kingdoms of Science, Art and inner Strength, by which is meant everything that lives itself out in the will. In these three domains the mediaeval esotericist saw the means for the further development of mankind. The transformation of the world was not given over to blind chance, but according to these three aspects of Wisdom, Beauty and Strength, the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms were to be transformed.

When the Earth again becomes astral everything will have been transformed in accordance with these three aspects. Thus it was from this three-fold point of view that the freemasons of the Middle Ages and all esotericists built and worked.

1905-10-24-GA093A

what preceedes the quote below, see: Enlivened images#1905-10-24-GA093A

The highest degree of perfection which we have put out from ourselves, which we have established around us, this we shall take with us. Therefore the Rosicrucians said: Form the world in such a way that it contains within itself Wisdom, Beauty and Strength; then Wisdom, Beauty and Strength will be reflected into us.

• Wisdom is the reflection of Manas;
• Beauty, Piety, Goodness are the reflection of Buddhi;
• Strength is the reflection of Atma.

To begin with we develop around us a domain of Wisdom through ourselves fostering Wisdom.

Then we develop a domain of Beauty in all regions. Then Wisdom becomes visible and reflects itself in us: Buddhi.

Finally we bestow on the whole physical existence, Wisdom within, Beauty without.

If our will enables us to carry this through, then we have strength: Atma, the power to transpose all this into reality. Thus we establish the three kingdoms within us: Manas, Buddhi, Atma.

Not through laborious research does Man progress further on the earth, but by embodying into the Earth Wisdom, Beauty and Strength. Through the work of our higher I we transform the transient body given us by the Gods and create for ourselves immortal bodies.

The chela, who ennobles his etheric body (so that it remains in existence), gradually renounces the Maharajas. The Master, whose physical body also remains in existence, can renounce the Lipikas. He stands above Karma.

This we must describe as the progress of Man in his inner life. What is higher, outside ourselves, we must seek to approach. Therefore our higher self is not to be sought within us, but in the individualities who have ascended into loftier regions.

1906-05-06-GA266

• Overcoming of physical love or development of astral body and transformation into spirit self, ennoblement of animal kingdom ... wisdom
• Rhythmization of breathing or development of the etheric body and transformation into life spirit, elevation of the plant kingdom ... beauty
• Radiation of kundalini or development of physical body, transformation into spirit man, elevation of mineral kingdom ... power

1911-11-30-GA127

Everything in life bears consequences. If a person makes a mistake or tells a lie, even if he is not aware of it with his ordinary consciousness, then it is still present in the subconscious, where it works as a destructive force, not only for the individual concerned but also for the development of the whole of mankind. Similarly, if a person binds him or herself to the forces of truth, it works as a life-giving power for all of humanity and the development of the world.

1916-08-05-GA170

[Intro to TBG]

I would like to use three words to describe the part of the human being that always remains strictly super-sensible — words that have been particularly significant since time immemorial. During certain periods they have degenerated into mere phrases, as have many such words, but they need not be taken as mere phrases if one gives them their full meaning. In the course of his development, a person comes into contact with truth, beauty and goodness. Truth, Beauty and Goodness are the three concepts to which I refer and which have been spoken about since time immemorial.

Even a superficial examination begins to reveal something of these ideas to us.

What is normally called truth is related to the life of thought, what one calls beautiful is related to the life of feeling, and what one calls good is related to the life of the will.

One can also say: the life of the will brings us into a relationship with morality.

Everything to do with aesthetic enjoyment and creativity is related to the life of the feelings.

All matters of truth are related to the life of thought.

Naturally, these things are always meant to be taken in a restricted sense. One thing plays over into the other. So is it always with the significant truths. A person develops here on the physical plane by participating in the moral life, in the aesthetic life, and in the life that is concerned with truth. But only the most crass of materialist could believe that the ideas of morality, of aesthetic worth, and of truth, refer to a concrete physical thing. Even for the man living here in the physical world, these three things point to the super-sensible.

Now, in this respect, it is instructive to become acquainted with the spiritual-scientific results that come to light when one addresses the questions:

What is the origin of the truth for which man strives?

What is the origin of that for which he strives in his artistic, aesthetic enjoyment or in his creative artistic and aesthetic efforts?

And what is the source of the morality for which he strives?

[1 - TRUTH]

For you see, in the physical world, everything to do with truth is related to the forces that are developed by means of the physical head. Indeed, it is related in such a way that matters of truth depend on the interaction between the physical head and the external, earthly world — extended, obviously, to include the cosmos, but the earthly, external world all the same. Thus, one can say: Matters of truth involve a relationship between our head and the outer world.

What do we observe when we turn to matters of beauty, to the aesthetic?

All these things rest on interactions and relationships.

[2 – BEAUTY]

If truth is based on the relationship of the head to the external world, then what relationship provides the basis for aesthetic experience, for artistic experience?

In the one case, our experience depends on the relation between the head and the rest of the body. It is very important to be entirely clear about this. Consider how here, in this world, a total, unqualified, absolutely awake consciousness is necessary for grasping the truth. Anyone who without further ado accepts a dream as truth, — truth in the same sense that we acknowledge it on the physical plane — is ill, is he not? Thus, in matters of thorough-going waking consciousness, our head is the organ that comes into consideration. And the consciousness of truth that we develop here on earth, or need to develop, is based primarily on the interaction between our head and the outer world. Of course this includes the spiritual parts of the external world in so far as we can come into contact with them, but they, also, belong to the world that surrounds us.

With aesthetic experience, what comes into consideration is what lives in the head and in the rest of the organism, for aesthetic experience arises either when the head dreams about what is going on in the rest of the organism, or when the rest of the organism dreams about what is going on in the head. These are interactions that involve more than can be contained in our normal life of ideas. The roots of these experiences reach beneath the conscious levels and they depend on the inward, more unconscious way our body and head interact when we enjoy something beautiful. The same elements that we are otherwise aware of in dreams surge back and forth, back and forth.

This is the primary thing with aesthetic enjoyment: either the head is dreaming about the contents of the rest of the body, or the rest of the body is dreaming about the contents of the head.

And then, afterwards, we bring this back from our inner world into waking consciousness. The waking consciousness comes second. The occult basis of all aesthetic and artistic enjoyment is this surging and weaving back and forth between the head and the rest of the organism.

In the case of lesser aesthetic pleasures, the head is dreaming of the body; with the higher and highest aesthetic pleasures, the body is dreaming about the head.

What I have just been explaining to you is the source of much of what I would like to call — if you will forgive the barbaric expression — the extensive spread of Botocudianism, of the botocudian attitude people have regarding aesthetic matters.

[Botocudian: The Botocudos are an Indian tribe of eastern Brazil. According to Chamber's Encyclopaedia of 1901 (Vol. 11, pp., 356-7), they are ‘the most barbarous of the Indian tribes of Brazil’. The tenor of the description that follows suggests how ‘botocudian’ could have become synonymous with extreme barbarism. The article concludes with the comment, ‘Ungovernably passionate, they often commit outrageous cruelties; but through systematically cruel treatment they have been almost annihilated, and now number not more than 4,000.’]

Everyone strives for truth, do they not, and also to do the good and follow the dictates of conscience, but when it comes to the aesthetic sphere we find botocudian attitudes in many circles. The feeling for beauty is not regarded as being necessary for a human being here in the physical world in the same way that truth and goodness are regarded as necessary. A person who does not strive for truth displays a human defect; a person who opposes the good also displays a human defect; but a person who is unable to understand the Sistine Madonna would not be seen as humanly defective because of this — and you will have to agree that there are many people who are unable to approach the artistic side of such a work of art. This is because the aesthetic sphere is something very inward, it involves something that must be done within oneself; it involves an interaction between our two parts, the head and the rest of the body, and in this we are answerable to no one but ourselves. A person without regard for the truth is harmful to others; a person who has no regard for the good is harmful to others, as well as to the spiritual world, as we know. But a person who is a Botocudian in his attitude to the sense of beauty deprives himself without harming the rest of mankind — except for those few who find it distinctly not beautiful for there to be so few who can respond openly to beauty.

[3 – THE GOOD]

Actually, our materialistic age has a false conception of the good, for it is assumed that the good approaches us in the same way as truth approaches us. But that is utter nonsense. The good signifies an interaction between the human body and the outer world, but in this case the body includes the head.

So these things are naturally interwoven!

• When we speak of the striving for truth, we are talking about the head in relation to the external world.
• When we speak of the striving for beauty, we are talking about the head in relation to the body.
• And when we speak of morality, we are talking about the relation of the body to the rest of the world.

But in this case we are including the head as part of the body, so that we are talking about the relation of the entire human being to an external world — and, indeed, in this case a purely spiritual outer world. Morality is concerned with the relation of the entire human being to the external world — not, however, to the physical external world, but rather to the spiritual forces and powers that surround us.

My dear friends, you know that when I speak of materialistic science I am speaking of something that has its rightful place, not of something that has no justification for existing. I have given many lectures here about the rightful place of materialism in the external sciences provided it remains within its own borders. But for a long time it has been impossible for scientific materialism to speak correctly about the relation of morality to humanity. It has not been possible for the simple reason that our materialistic science has long been suffering — and still suffers — from a fundamental disease and it will not be able to speak until the illness has been removed. I have mentioned this fundamental illness frequently, but when one, speaks of it our scientifically-minded people regard one as a thorough-going dilettante.

Two kind of nerves and non-sense

You will be aware of the fact that present-day science talks about two kinds of nerves: the so-called sensory nerves that serve feeling and perception, and the nerves connected with the motor system which are supposed to serve human will impulses and acts of will. The sensory nerves are said to connect the periphery with the inner parts, the motor nerves to connect the inner parts with the periphery. A nerve that issues from the brain and mediates the lifting of my hand is called a motor nerve; whereas it is a sensory nerve that is supposed to be involved when I touch something and feel that it is warm or smooth. Thus, the anatomy and physiology of today assumes there are two kinds of nerves. This is utter nonsense. But it will be a long time before it is recognised as nonsense. Even though it is known that there is no anatomical difference between the motor and the sensory nerves, it will be a long time before people admit that there is only one kind of nerve and that the motor nerves are not different from the sensory nerves. Actually, arousal of the will does not depend on these motor nerves, which serve rather for perception of the processes brought about by the will. For in order to be fully conscious when I lift my hand, I must be able to perceive the movement of my hand. The only thing this involves is an inner sensory nerve which perceives the movements of the hand. I am of course very well aware of all the objections that one can raise against this, based on diseases of the spinal cord, and so on; but when these cases are properly understood they do not furnish contrary evidence, but rather are proof for what I am saying.

Therefore, there is only one kind of nerve, not the two kinds that haunt today's materialistic science. The so-called motor nerves are only there to serve our perception of movement. They also serve perception. They are internally situated nerves of perception which reach towards the periphery of the body for the purpose of perception. But, as I said, this will only gradually come to be recognised, and only when it has been recognised will it be possible to have some understanding for the connection between morality and the will, or for the direct connection between morality and the entire human being. For morality really works directly on what we call the  I . Working down from there, it affects the astral body, the etheric body and, finally, the physical body. Therefore, if a moral act is committed, the moral impulse radiates, so to speak, from the  I  into the astral body, then into the etheric body, and then into the physical body. Now it becomes movement, becomes something that happens outwardly; and it is only at this stage that it can be perceived by means of the so-called motor nerves.

[Morality]

Morality is truly something that works into humanity directly from the spiritual world. It comes more directly out of the spiritual world than, for example, beauty and truth. In the case of truth, truths have to be approached in a sphere where physical truths, as well as the pure spiritual truths, have a say. In order to enter us, spiritual truths have to make the same detour through the head that is necessary for ordinary physical perceptions mediated by the senses. Moral impulses involve the entire human being, even when we take hold of them in a purely spiritual fashion as moral ideas. That is the fact to keep sight of: they affect the entire human being.

In order to understand this matter more fully we must look further into the way the difference between the head and the rest of the body is revealed. As regards our uppermost part, the head, the things that most come into consideration are the parts we refer to as the physical body and the etheric body. These are revealed distinctly, here in the physical plane, by the head. When I have a physical head before me, I must say to myself: ‘Yes, here I have something expressed like in a drawing. There is a physical shape, the physical body, and the etheric body. But there is already less of the astral body present. And as for the I, it is almost entirely absent; it cannot come very strongly at all into the formative forces of the head. Its presence there is almost entirely restricted to the soul level.’ Thus, the presence of the I in the head is very much on the soul level; although it saturates the head with its soul forces, it remains fairly independent of it. This is not the case with the rest of the body. There — paradoxical and strange though it may seem — there the physical body and etheric body are much less physically, bodily present. There the astral body and I are more strongly active. The I is active in the circulation of the blood. Everything else that lives in the body is a strong expression of the astral. On the other hand, the parts of the physical body that are actually physical cannot even be directly observed. (I refer to, as physical, those parts that are governed by physical forces, those subject to physical forces.)

Naturally, it is terribly easy to deceive oneself in this regard. Anyone who accepts materialistic criteria will say that breathing is a physical process in the human being: a person takes in air and then, as a consequence of the breath, certain processes occur in the blood, and so on, all of this being physical processes.

Of course these all are physical processes, but the forces on which the chemical processes of the blood are based come from the I. It is precisely in the human body that what is really physical is less involved.

For example, physical forces are expressed in the human body when a child begins to crawl and then to assume an upright position. That is a kind of victory over gravity. These extraordinary relationships with balance and with the effects of weight are always present, but they are not physically visible. They are what spiritual science refers to as the physical body: they are physical forces, to be sure, but they are, essentially, forces that cannot be observed. It is like having a balance on a stand; in the middle is the hypomochlion; forces are acting on one side because of the weight that is there; other forces are working on the other side where another weight is hanging. The strings by which the weights are attached are not identical with the forces at work there; even though the forces are physical, they are invisible. This is the sense in which parts of the human body can be called physical — for the most part, they are to be thought of as forces.

When we come to the etheric sphere, there is still a considerable amount that remains unobservable. There are physical processes that are brought into play by sense perceptions, as when perception of taste affects the taste-nerves. All of these, however, are basically very subtle processes.

Then we come to what happens in the muscles, and so on. Although the muscles provide us with a likeness, a picture that we can physically perceive, this picture depends on astral forces. The processes that occur in the nerves also depend on the astral.

And then we come to the circulation of the blood, to the forces of the  I . The forces of the  I  and the astral body are at work in everything associated with the processes of inheritance through the succession of the generations. But astral body and  I  do not work in the same way in the human head, especially not the  I . You could say that the  I  is very active in man's head when he is awake, but it never brings about any inner processes there in the way it does in the rest of the body, in the blood. The blood that goes to the head is dependent on the rest of the body — that is the kind of thing I meant when I said that one cannot separate things absolutely. One thing plays over into the other. Although blood flows to the head, the actual impulse of the blood does not originate in the head; the blood is pressed into the head. To the extent that this is a bodily process it originates in the  I .

Thus, one really can say that when we look at a person's head, the most prominent and most important things to be seen are those that have been pressed outward into the physical and etheric bodies. If we look at the rest of the body, the most important things are the impulses and forces that are at work in it. These originate in the  I  and the astral body.

Therefore, when you contrast the head, on the one hand, with the rest of the body on the other, it is the physical and etheric bodies that are relatively prominent in the head, whereas the astral body and the  I that flow through it remain relatively independent.

With the rest of the body it is the  I  and the astral body that are directly at work in the physical processes, whereas the remaining members are only present as the basis of an invisible framework — a physical and etheric framework that is not normally even considered. The place where the I  is really present is in the circulation of the blood.

And now, what about the part we could call the moral-etheric aura?

First of all, this part works on the entire human being. But it works on the  I and the  I  works on the bodily part of man — for example in the blood. As we saw, the most important thing in the blood is the  I . Morality affects the blood. You should not concentrate too much on the physical aspects of the blood; the physical blood is only there to occupy, so to speak, a position in space where the forces of the  I  can work. Instead, consider the blood in the light of what I have described. Morality, therefore, affects the  I . In the blood, the forces of the  I  encounter the forces of morality.

This is true for the man who stands here in the physical world: there is a spiritual encounter between what pulses in his blood and the moral forces that radiate into it. In the course of this encounter, the really moral impulses drive out what otherwise would emanate from the blood.

Picture this as the bloodstream: the  I  flows in it and morality is at work there, too. (See the drawing.) Morality, then, has to counter the initial stream of the  I . Therefore it must be a counter-force to this flowing force of the  I . And so it is. When someone has the impulse to take a strong moral stand, this moral impulse has a direct effect on his blood. This effect even precedes the perception, mediated by the head, of the moral event and the moral process. This is what led Aristotle to make a wonderful observation. (Aristotle always took note of these things, both the physical and the moral, with an exacting eye.)

He said that morality depends on a skill and that actual moral practice is the child of something further — it is the child of intellectual judgement.

To put it radically, the head is a spectator. And so, as we move about here on the physical plane, the forces of the  I  that are the basis of the circulation of the blood interact with moral impulses pressing in upon us from out of the spiritual world. Essentially, this interaction is based on the fact that we occupy our entire body with our waking consciousness. The  I really does have to be present as conscious ego in the pulsing of the blood. Perhaps you are wanting to say — I will slip this in parenthetically — Yes, but the  I  and the astral body are outside of the physical body and etheric body when one is sleeping.

How can the  I  and the astral body be the prime active forces here, since the shapes and movements still persist during sleep, during the time the astral body and  I  are absent! To be sure, the essential parts are outside the body, but, as I have often emphasised, this withdrawal from the body only applies essentially to one part of it, the head. I have said explicitly that the interaction of the  I  and astral body with the rest of the organism is all the more intensive when these are not at work in the head. That has often been said here. The  I and the astral body are not separated from the rest of the organism in the same way as they are from the head.

But it is through the head that morality pours in when it encounters the ego forces in the blood. That is why I said earlier that the head must be included here as part of the entire body. For moral impulses cannot pour into the body directly, but have to enter by way of the head. This implies that the person must be awake. If a man is asleep and his I and his astral body have withdrawn from his head, morality would have to pour into the head and body by way of the physical and etheric, rather than spiritually. But this is not possible, for these have nothing to do with morality.

Now, if you will be entirely honest with yourself, there is a simple thing that will convince you of the truth of what I am saying. Just ask yourself how moral you are in your sleep or in your dreams — assuming that morality is not just a reminiscence of physical life! Now and then morality and everything to do with morals has rather a bad time in the world of dreams, does it not? Things can be quite amoral there; the criteria of morality are no more applicable there than they are in the world of plants. As such, moral impulses can only be applied to waking life. So you can see that morality involves a direct influence of our spiritual environment on the forces within us radiating from the  I .

[Beauty]

Now let us turn to beauty and to the things that have aesthetic effect. We already know that this depends on an interaction between the head and the rest of the body. The head dreams about the rest of the body, the rest of the body dreams about the head. If one investigates what lies behind this, one discovers that everything aesthetic originates in certain impulses that come from the spiritual world and stimulate that interaction. Those representatives of botocudianism to whom I earlier referred are less susceptible to these impulses; they do not allow themselves to be inwardly moved by the impulses that summon up such interactions. These impulses, however, do not affect the  I . They work directly on the astral body, as distinguished from moral impulses, which work directly on the  I . And that lack of consciousness associated with morality, that half-unconscious quality of conscience, is a result of the way morality must pass through the head — to which the  I is not so intimately bound — and thence into the more subconscious realm of the body, seizing the whole person. The aesthetic sphere works directly on the astral body. There it brings about that extraordinary interplay between the part of the astral body that is intensively connected with wakefulness, whether it be wakefulness of the nerves or wakefulness in the muscles of the body, and the part of the astral body that is connected with the head and has less to do with wakefulness in the nerves or muscles of the body. For the head and the rest of the body are related in different ways to the astral body. This is why there are two kinds of human astrality; the more or less free astrality associated with the head, and the astrality that is bound to the physical processes in the rest of the body. The aesthetic impulse causes the free and the bound parts of the astral to interact and play into one another. They weave and surge, back and forth, through one another.

[Truth]

And when we enter the realm of truth, we find that truth, also, is something super-sensible. But it affects the head directly. Truth as such is directly connected with the activities and processes of the head. But the most curious thing about truth is that a human being grasps it in such a way — and truth affects him in such a way — that it flows directly into the etheric body. You may infer this from our numerous discussions of the past. In so far as truth lives in human thoughts, it lives in the etheric body. As I have often said, truth lives with thoughts in the etheric body. Truth enters the etheric part of the head directly. From there, naturally, it is passed on, as truth, to the physical part of the head.

[Conclusion]

This, you see, is the human being as he is when he is possessed by truth, beauty and goodness — by knowledge, by the aesthetic, by morality. When a person is in the grip of knowledge, or perception, or truth, the external world flows directly into his etheric body from outside-flowing through the I and the astral body in so far as the head is involved in the process. And because a person is not able to submerge himself consciously in his etheric body, the truth appears to him as a thing that is already complete in itself. One of the overwhelming and surprising experiences of initiation comes when one begins to experience truth as a free impulse that resides in the etheric body, in the same way as one experiences morality or beauty in the astral body.

This is overwhelming and surprising because the one who goes through an initiation enters into a much freer relationship to truth and, as a consequence, into a much more responsible relationship with truth. As long as we remain unaware of truth as it enters us, it appears as something already completed. Then we simply say, applying the normal logic: this is true, that is false. As long as this remains the case, one has much less of a sense of responsibility towards the truth than one has after discovering that the truth is just as dependent on deeply-rooted feelings of sympathy and antipathy as are morality and beauty. Then one begins to relate to truth in freedom.

At this point we touch on yet another mystery, an important mystery of the subjective life.

It manifests itself in the fact that the feeling for truth of some who approach initiation in an improper, unworthy way does not increase. They do not develop a greater sense of responsibility toward the truth. Instead, they cease to feel responsible about violating the truth and come under the influence of a certain element of untruth. Oh, herein lies much of significance regarding mankind's evolution towards spiritual truth, which in its purest form is wisdom. To the extent that it flows into the  I  and the astral body, truth directly enters the etheric, the human etheric. Beauty affects the human astral body; morality penetrates to the  I  — it is admitted into the ego. Thus, when truth pours into us from out of the cosmos it still remains for it to work on into the physical body. It must still imprint itself on the physical body — in other words, on the physical brain. There, in the physical realm it becomes perception. When beauty streams into our astral body from out of the cosmos, it still has to work its way into the etheric body and thence into the physical body. The good works into the  I , and must imprint itself so strongly on the I that its vibrations are able to penetrate the astral body, the etheric body and, finally, the physical body. Only there, in the physical body, can it finally become effective.

Thus is mankind related to the true, the good and the beautiful.

• In truth, man opens his etheric body directly to the cosmos — initially, it is the etheric part of the head.
• In beauty, he opens his astral body directly to the cosmos.
• In the sphere of morality, he opens his  I  directly to the cosmos.

[Timing – see evolutionary note the lecture of the next day]

• Of these, truth is the one that has been in preparation for mankind for the longest time. We will speak further about these things tomorrow and see how they are related to the laws that govern life between death and a new birth, as well as life between birth and death.
• Relatively speaking, beauty has been in preparation for a shorter time.
• Morality is something that is only now in its first earthly stages.

Again:

• What lives in the truth and, in its purified state, becomes wisdom, underwent its first stages during the Sun stage of human evolution. It achieved its highest point during the Moon stage, lives further during the Earth stage, and will essentially have reached completion by the period that we call the Jupiter stage of evolution. By then, mankind will have more or less completed the aspects of its development that have to do with the contents of wisdom.
• Beauty — which is a very inward thing for man — had its first beginnings during Old Moon evolution. It continues to develop now, during Earth evolution, and it will reach its final completion during Future Venus — during what we call the Future Venus stage of evolution. In all these cases where we have had recourse to the occult in assigning names to things, there are good reasons for choosing the names. It is not for nothing that I call one stage of development ‘the Future Venus stage’; it is so named to correspond with what will then be the dominant process.
• During the Old Moon stage of development there was nothing that could be called morality. At that time, the bonds of necessity, of what was virtually a natural necessity, connected human beings to their acts. Morality could only begin on Earth. It will reach its culmination during the Vulcan stage when the purified  I — the  I  that has been purified by morality and entirely moulded by it — will be the only thing that pulsates in the fiery processes of the blood. Then the forces of the human ego and the forces of morality will have become one and the same thing. Then the blood of mankind — in other words, the warmth of the blood, for matter is just an external sign of this warmth — will have become the holy fire of Vulcan.

1922-12-16-GA219

The faculties needed by man in order that he may be able to confront the world and work in it during earthly life are connected, as I have shown, with his activities in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. This means, however, that here on Earth man lives in certain spheres which on the Earth itself have no inherent reality, which manifest their reality only when observed in the supersen-sible realm.

[Truth – Beauty – Good created in through TFW experience]

We will turn our attention today to the three domains which actually comprise all human activity on Earth:

• to the thoughts through which man endeavors to assimilate Truth in the world ;
• to feelings, in so far as in and through his world of feeling, man endeavors to assimilate the Beau­tiful;
• to his will-nature, in so far as he is meant to bring the Good to fulfilment through it.

[TRUTH: Thoughts]

When we speak of thoughts, we mean that domain through which Truth can be assimilated. But thoughts in themselves cannot be real.

-         Precisely when we are clear that through our thoughts we have to inform ourselves about the truth of what is real, then it must also be admitted that thoughts, as such, cannot be anything real. Just imagine for a moment that you were to be fixed as firmly in your thoughts as you are in your brain or your heart ; if that were the case, these thoughts would indeed be something real in themselves. We should not be able to assimilate reality through them.

-         Nor could we ever express through human speech what human speech is intended to express if it contained full reality in the ordinary earthly sense. If every time we uttered a sen­tence we were obliged to work something heavy out of the mouth, we should be unable to express anything ; it would rather be a matter of producing something.

In this sense, what is spoken is not a reality in itself, but 'signifies' a reality, just as thoughts are not themselves a reality but merely signify a reality.

And if we consider the Good, then we shall find that what is formed through physical reality can never be called the Good. We must bring up from the depths of our being the impulse to Goodness, at first as something entirely unreal, and then make it a reality. If the impulse to Goodness were to arise like hunger, as an external reality, Goodness is just what it could not be.

Again, when you are looking at a statue it does not occur to you to think that you can converse with it. It is merely semblance ; and in the semblance something is made manifest, namely : Beauty.

So that in Truth, reality is certainly indicated; but Truth itself moves in an element of unreality; and it is the same with Beauty, the same with Goodness.

It is therefore necessary for man that his thoughts are not, in themselves, real. Just imagine—if thoughts were to wan­der around in the head like leaden figures, then, to be sure, you would be aware of a reality, but these leaden thoughts would not be able to signify anything to you, they would be something real themselves. As truly as Thoughts, as the Beautiful and the Good too cannot be directly real, so it is also true that reality is necessary in this physical-earthly world in order that we can have Thoughts, make the Beau­tiful manifest in the world through art, and also bring the Good to fulfilment.

[Ahrimanic beings – in kingdom gnomes]

In speaking of this I come today to a domain of Spiritual Science which can lead us very deeply into the spirituality that is around us here on Earth and is essential for earthly existence, but completely withdrawn from the observation possible to the senses and hence cannot be grasped by the ordinary consciousness which depends, as you know, entirely upon physical perception. The fact is that we are surrounded everywhere by spiritual beings of the greatest possible vari­ety, only the ordinary consciousness does not perceive them. Their existence is necessary in order that as human beings we may be able to unfold our faculties, to have thoughts in their chimerical lightness and evanescence, so that they are not present in our heads like leaden weights, are not some­thing real in themselves, but can 'signify' reality.

For this it is necessary that there should be beings in the world who prevent our thoughts with their non-reality from immediately vanishing from us again. We men are really too cumbersome, too ponderous, to be able without more ado to hold fast our thoughts with the ordinary consciousness. Elemental beings must be there, beings who help us ever and again to hold fast our thoughts. Such elemental beings are indeed present, only they are extraordinarily hard to dis­cover because they always conceal themselves.

When we ask:

How does it really come about that we can hold fast a thought when it has no reality at all ? Who is helping us to do this ?

—even then it is very easy to be deceived, precisely when the matter is considered in the light of Spiritual Sci­ence. For at the very moment we begin to ask ourselves the question:

by whom are thoughts held fast for men?

—through this very desire to know about the spirit-entities who hold thoughts fast, we are driven into the realm of the Ahrimanic beings; we plunge into the realm of these beings and very soon begin to believe—although it is of course a deceptive belief—that man must be supported by the Ahrimanic spirits in order to hold fast the thoughts, so that they shall not vanish the moment he grasps them. On this ac­count, most people are—unconsciously—even grateful to the Ahrimanic beings for supporting them in their thinking. But it is misplaced gratitude, for there is a whole kingdom of beings who support us in our thought-world particularly, and who are by no means Ahrimanic.

These beings are difficult to find in the spiritual world, even for well-trained vision. One finds them sometimes by observing a very clever man at work; if one watches such a man one can perceive that he actually has a volatile, fleeting band of followers. He does not go about alone but has a fugitive following of spiritual beings who do not belong to the Ahrimanic kingdom, but who have an altogether re­markable character. One first really learns to know these beings when one can observe those other beings who belong to the Ahrimanic realm, to the elemental kingdoms, and therefore are not perceptible to the eyes of the senses, who are at work when forms in Nature, crystal forms, for exam­ple, arise. The activity of these beings underlies all form; you find them described in my Mystery Plays as beings who chisel and hammer out solid forms. If you think of the gnome-like beings in one of the Mystery Plays (re: The Soul's Awakening. Scene 2) you have there the beings who produce forms. Now these beings are sly and crafty—as you can see from the way I have pre­sented them in the Play—and they mock at the scanty intel­ligence possessed by men. Call to mind those scenes from the Mystery Play if they are known to you.

Now if we observe a really clever man and perceive how he may have a retinue consisting of a whole host of such beings as I have described, we find that these beings are despised by the gnome-spirits of the elemental world because they are clumsy and, above all, because they are terribly foolish. Foolishness is their main characteristic! And so it can be said that precisely the very cleverest people in the world, when we can observe them from this aspect, are fol­lowed by whole troops of 'spirit-fools.' It is as if these foolish spirits wanted to belong to someone. And they are greatly disdained by the beings who fashion and shape forms in Nature in the way described in the Mystery Plays. We can therefore say : among the worlds unknown to begin with to ordinary consciousness, there is one that is peopled by a spirit-folk of 'fools', fools who throng towards human wis­dom and cleverness. In the present age these beings have actually no life of their own. They achieve a life by using the life of those who are dying, who are dying from illness but in whom life-forces are still present. These beings can only make use of a life that is past. Thus there are spirit-fools who use the life that remains over from men; they sate themselves with the life that lingers in cemeteries and such places.

It is when we penetrate into worlds like this that we realize how densely populated is the realm lying behind the world that is perceptible to the senses, how manifold are the classes of spirit-beings, and how closely connected these spirit-beings are with our faculties. A clever man pursuing his activities, who is merely clever and not clairvoyant, can hold fast his thoughts precisely through the fact that he is followed by this troop of spirit-fools. These spirit-fools rivet themselves to his thoughts, drag at them and give them weight, so that they remain with him, whereas otherwise they would quickly vanish from him.

These beings are, as I said, bitterly scoffed at by the gnome-like beings. The gnome-like beings will not tolerate them in their realm although they belong to it. The gnome-like beings drive the others away continually and there is a hard fight between the gnome-folk and this folk of spirit-fools through whom alone wisdom is made possible for man ; otherwise the wisdom would be fugitive, would pass away the moment it came into existence, could not remain. As has been said, these beings are hard to discover because it is so easy to fall into the Ahrimanic sphere directly ques­tions are asked about them. But one can find them on occa­sions such as I have just indicated, by observing very clever men who are followed by a whole troop of such beings. Apart from that, however, when there are not enough clever thoughts fastening on to men, these beings are to be found lingering, for example, in libraries—when the books contain clever material. When the contents of books are stupid these beings are not to be found; they are to be found only where there is cleverness. On that they rivet themselves.

This gives us some insight into a realm that surrounds us everywhere, that is present just as the Nature-kingdoms are present, that has something to do with our faculties, but is very difficult to assess. If we wish to do that we must rely upon those gnome-like beings and set some store by their judgment—and they, in fact, consider the other beings stupid and impudent.

But these other beings have yet another characteristic. When they are too severely persecuted by the gnome-like beings they escape into human heads, and whereas outside in Nature they are almost giants—of an enormous size—they become quite tiny when they are inside men's heads. One could say that they are an abnormal species of Nature-spirits, who are, however, intimately connected with the whole of human evolution on the Earth.

[BEAUTY - Luciferic beings – in kingdom sylph]

Beings of another kind live chiefly in the watery and airy elements, just as do those beings described in the Mystery Plays as the sylph-like beings. The beings to whom I am now referring have chiefly to do with the world of 'beautiful semblance.' They attach themselves less to men who are clever in the ordinary sense than to those who are genuinely artistic in nature. But these beings too are very hard to discover as they can so easily conceal themselves. They are to be found where there are genuine works of art, where, for instance, the human form or forms of Nature and so forth are portrayed in semblance. There they are to be found.

These beings too, as I said, can only be discovered with difficulty. When, for instance, we ask :

How is it that beau­tiful semblance interests us, that there are occasions when we derive greater pleasure from a beautiful statue than from a living person (true, it is a different kind of pleasure, but for all that, greater), or that we are edified and delighted by melodies or harmonies?

When we ask ourselves this we very easily fall into a different realm, into the realm of the Luciferic beings. It is not only the Luciferic beings who promote enthusiasm for art, but again there is a kingdom of elemental beings by whom interest in art is stimulated and kept alive in man. Without such beings, man would never be disposed to take an interest in beautiful semblance, simply because it is unreal.

Now the reason why it is so difficult to discover these beings is because they can conceal themselves even more easily than the spirit-fools, for they are actually only present where beauty makes its power felt. And when we are wrapt in enjoyment of the beautiful, then we certainly do not see these beings.

Why is this?

In order to get a sight of them in a normal way, we must endeavor, while given up in some way to artistic impres­sions, to direct clairvoyant vision to the beings who are depicted in the same scene in the Mystery Play as nymph- or sylph-like beings ; these beings too belong to the elemental Nature-kingdoms, and we must project ourselves into them. We must, as it were, look with these air- and water-beings at the others who are present whenever joy is taken in beauty. And as this is difficult, we must turn to other means of help. Now fortunately it is easy to discover these beings when we are listening to someone who speaks beautifully and whose language we do not properly understand; when we hear only the sounds without understanding the meaning. If we then abandon ourselves to the experience of this beautiful speak­ing—but it must be really beautiful speaking, genuine ora­tory, and we must not be able to understand it properly—then we can acquire the faculty, intimate and delicate as it is, of seeing these beings.

Thus we must try, as it were, to acquire the talent of the sylphs and to strengthen it through the talent that unfolds when we listen to beautiful speech without endeavoring to understand the meaning but having ears only for its beauty. Then we discover the beings who are present wher­ever beauty is and lend their support so that man can have a true interest in it.

And then follows the disillusionment, the great and terrible surprise. For these beings are in fact hideously ugly, the very ugliest that can be imagined; they are ghastly creatures, the very archetypes of ugliness. And if we have developed the requisite spiritual vision and visit some studio where artistic work is being done, we find that it is these beings who are present on Earth, like spiders on the ground of world-exist­ence, in order that men may take interest in beauty. It is through these frightful spider-creatures of an elemental order that interest in beauty really awakens. Man simply could not have the right interest in beauty if in his life of soul he were not entangled in a world of hideously ugly spider-like beings.

When they are going through a Gallery, people have no inkling—for what I have said refers only to discovering the form of these beings, who are always present when anyone is delighting in beauty—people have no inkling of how they are strengthened in the interest they take in beautiful pictures by having these hideous spider-like creatures creeping in and out of their ears and nostrils.

Man's enthusiasm for what is beautiful arises on the foun­dation of ugliness. That is a cosmic secret, my dear friends. The spur of ugliness is needed in order that the beautiful may be made manifest. And the greatest artists were men who because of their strong bodily constitution could endure the invasions of these spidery beings in order to produce, let us say, a Sistine Madonna, or the like. Whatever beauty is brought forth in the world has been lifted out of a sea of ugliness through the enthusiasm in the human soul.

Let it not be thought that behind the veil of the material world, in the region beyond the threshold, we come into a realm of pure beauty. Do not imagine that anyone who is cognizant of these things speaks lightheartedly when he says that if men are not properly prepared they must be held back at the threshold of the spiritual world. For it is essential first of all to know the thoroughly unedifying foundations of all that in front of the curtain as it were, is uplifting and edifying.

Therefore if with spiritual sight we move about the ele­mental world belonging to air and water, again we see the great battle waging between the fleeting sylphs and undines and these archetypes of ugliness.

Although I spoke of the latter as spidery creatures, the tissues of which they are formed are not like those of spiders as we know them, but they are composed of the elements of water and watery va­por. They are volatile air-formations, the ugliness of which is enhanced inasmuch as every second they have a different ugliness; each succeeding ugliness gives the impression of being even worse than its predecessor. This world is present in air and water together with everything that is delightful there.

[GOOD: Warm fiery beings develop when man has within him warmth of feeling for Goodness]

And now in order that man may unfold enthusiasm for the Good, something else takes place.

It can be said of the other beings that they are more or less actually there, but in the case of the beings of whom I am now going to speak it must really be said that they are continually coming into existence, whenever, in fact, a man has within him warmth of feeling for Goodness. It is in this warmth that these beings develop; their nature itself is warm and fiery ; they live in the present but their inherent nature is similar to what I have described in the book Occult Science in connection with the Saturn-existence of man.

As man was in the Old Saturn-existence, so are these beings today. Their form is not the same but their nature is similar. It cannot be said of them that they are beautiful or ugly, or anything of that kind; they must be judged in com­parison with the ordinary elemental warmth-beings who, as you know, also exist.

All spiritual research in this sphere is extraordinarily difficult. It is very difficult to approach the beings who live entirely in warmth, that is to say, in 'fire' in the old sense, and when one does come upon them it is not very pleasant. One comes upon them, for instance, when lying in a high fever, but then as a rule one is not a really ob­jective observer. Otherwise it is a matter of developing the requisite faculty for perceiving these warmth-beings by elab­orating the methods indicated in my books.

These warmth-beings have a certain relationship with the beings who appear, for instance, when a man has warm enthusiasm for the Good, but the relationship is of a very peculiar kind. I will assume hypothetically—for only in that way can I describe these things—that warmth-beings of the normal kind are present, originating in man's physical warmth, which as you know is greater than the warmth of the environ­ment. Man has his own warmth, hence these particular beings are near him. And now, in a man who has enthusiasm for the Good these other beings make themselves manifest; they too are warmth-beings, but of a different kind. When they are in the neighbourhood of the normal fire-beings they immediately draw back from them and slip into the inmost recesses of man's nature. If one then makes great efforts to discover their essential characteristics in contrast to those of the normal warmth-beings, one finds that they have an inner, but very pronounced, bashfulness. They refuse absolutely to be observed by other beings of the spiritual world, and flee from them because they are ashamed of being seen; they flee first and foremost into the inmost nature of man. Hence they are hard to discover. Actually they are only to be dis­covered if we observe ourselves in certain moments that it is really not so very easy to bring about at will. Just suppose that in spite of not being in the least sentimental we are moved to tears simply by reading a scene in a book that grips us deeply and dramatically. Some great and good action is described, let us say, in a novel. If we have the power of self-observation we can discover how whole hosts of such beings (who have such delicate sensibility that they do not want to be seen by any other beings of the spiritual world) flee into our heart, into our breast, how they come to us, how they seek protection from the other warmth-beings and in fact from any other beings of the elemental spiritual worlds.

There is a significant force of repulsion between the normal warmth-beings and these other warmth beings with their in­tense bashfulness who live only in the sphere of man's moral life and who flee from contact with other spirit-beings. These beings are present in far greater numbers than is usually imagined and it is they who imbue man with enthusiasm for the morally good. Man would not readily acquire this enthusiasm for the morally good if these beings did not come to his aid ; and when a man loves the moral, he has a real bond, an unconscious bond, with these beings.

Certain of their characteristics are such as may lead us to misunderstand this whole kingdom. For after all, why do these beings feel bashful and ashamed?

It is actually be­cause all the other beings in the elemental kingdoms of the spiritual world in which they live, disdain them, will have nothing to do with them. They are aware of this and the disdain to which they are subjected causes them to stimulate enthusiasm for the Good.

These beings have certain other characteristics of which I do not care to speak, for the human soul is so obviously up­set at any mention of such hideous spidery creatures. I therefore prefer not to refer to certain of their peculiarities.

[Summary]

But at any rate we have heard how what unfolds in the realm of the senses as the True, the Beautiful, the Good, unfolds from foundations which need the three spiritual kingdoms I have described, just as we on Earth need the ground on which we walk.

These beings do not create the True, the Beautiful or the Good.

• But the thoughts which express the True, signify the True, need the spirit-dunderheads, so that they may move on their shoulders.
• The Beautiful that man produces needs the ugly water- and air-spiders so that it can raise itself out of this ocean of ugliness.
• And the Good needs a kingdom of beings who cannot show themselves at all among the other normal warmth-beings, who must always fight shy of them, and for this very reason evoke enthusiasm for the Good.

If these beings did not exist, then

• instead of thoughts in our heads we should have, if not exactly leaden soldiers, at least heavy vapors and nothing clever could possibly result.
• In order to produce the Beautiful we should need to have the gift of imbuing it with actual life in order that men's in­terest might be aroused.

In order that here, in the world of the senses, there may be at hand what we need for the activity of thought, for the sense of beauty, for the will to arouse enthusiasm for the good—for this, three such ele­mental kingdoms are necessary.

[Evolutionary perspective on TBG beings]

The normal elemental kingdoms—that is, the kingdoms of the gnomes, sylphs, undines and salamanders, to use folk-terminology—are still at the stage of striving to become something in the world. They are on the way to having forms resembling those in our sense-world; the forms will not be the same, but one day they will become perceptible to the senses possessed by men today, whereas now, in their elementary existence, these beings are not perceptible to the ordinary senses.

The beings I have now described to you have in fact already by-passed the stage at which men and animals and plants are today.

So that if, for example, we were able to go back to the Old Moon-existence which preceded the Earth, we should there encounter the beings found on Earth today as the bashful beings connected with moral impulses in man. On the Old Moon they would have been perceptible as a real animal world, spinning as it were from tree to tree. But you must call to mind the Old Moon-existence as I have described it in the book Occult Science. Everything in this Moon-existence was pliable and fluid and metamorphosis has con­tinually taken place. Among the beings there, spinning in and out, were those hideous beings I have described, those spidery creatures permeating the Old Moon and visible there.

And there were also present the beings who as spirit-fools accompany the wise on the Earth today. They were a factor in bringing about the destruction of the Old Moon, so that the Earth could arise. And even now, during Earth-exist­ence, these beings have no pleasure in the formation of crys­tals, but rather in the breaking up of everything mineral.

Thus while we can say of the normal elemental beings that they will one day become visible to the senses, we must say of these other beings : once upon a time they were visible to the senses and have now sprung over into the spiritual—admittedly through their Luciferic and Ahrimanic natures.

Thus there are two kinds of elemental beings—ascending and descending. We can say : on the 'dung' of Old Moon ugliness—which was there in profusion during the Old Moon-existence—on the 'dung' of Old Moon ugliness, our world of beauty springs forth.

You have an analogy in Nature when you carry manure to the fields and beautiful plants spring from it. There you have an analogy in Nature except that the dung, the manure, is also perceptible to the senses. So it is when the half-reality of the world of beauty is observed clairvoyantly. Try to envisage this half-real world of beauty, quite apart from the teeming life in the three kingdoms of Nature on the Earth; picture all the beautiful after-effects springing from the Earth. Just as lovely flowers spring up in a meadow, you must spiritually picture underneath it all the Moon-dung which contains the ugly spidery creatures I have described. Just as cabbage does not grow unless it is manured, as little can beauty blossom on the Earth unless the Gods manure the Earth with ugliness. That is the inner necessity of life. And this inner necessity of life must be known to us, for such  knowledge alone can give us the power to confront with understanding what actually surrounds us in Nature.

Anyone who believes that beauty in art can be produced on Earth without the foundation of this ugliness is like a man who is horrified that people use manure, insisting that it would be far better to let beautiful things grow without it.—In point of fact it is not possible for beauty to be produced without the foundation of ugliness. And if people do not want to give themselves up to illusion about the world, that is, if they genuinely desire to know the essential and not the illusory, then they must acquire knowledge of these things. Whoever believes that there is art in the world without ugliness does not know what art is.

And why not ?

Simply for the reason that only he who has an inkling of what I have described to you today will enjoy works of art in the right way, for he knows at what cost they are purchased in world-existence. Whoever wants to enjoy works of art with­out this consciousness is like a man who would prefer to do away with manure on the fields. Such a man has no real knowledge of what grows in Nature ; he has, in fact, merely an illusion before him—plants of papier-mache, although real plants are actually there. Whoever does not feel ugliness as the foundation has not the right kind of delight in beauty.

Such is the world-order and men must acquire knowledge of it if they do not want to go on wandering about like earthworms, keeping to their own element and not looking upwards to what is real. Men can only develop the talents latent within them if they confront reality fairly and squarely. Reality, however, is not attained merely by talking time and time again of spirit, spirit, spirit, but by really coming to know the spiritual. But the fact has also to be faced that in certain regions of the spiritual world something like I have been describing to you today will be encountered.

1922-12-16-GA219

We will turn our attention today to the three domains which actually comprise all human activity on Earth:

• to the thoughts through which man endeavors to assimilate Truth in the world;
• to feelings, in so far as in and through his world of feeling, man endeavors to assimilate the Beautiful;
• to his will-nature, in so far as he is meant to bring the Good to fulfilment through it.

[Human experience and expression]

When we speak of thoughts, we mean that domain through which Truth can be assimilated. But thoughts in themselves cannot be real. Precisely when we are clear that through our thoughts we have to inform ourselves about the truth of what is real, then it must also be admitted that thoughts, as such, cannot be anything real. Just imagine for a moment that you were to be fixed as firmly in your thoughts as you are in your brain or your heart; if that were the case, these thoughts would indeed be something real in themselves. We should not be able to assimilate reality through them.

Nor could we ever express through human speech what human speech is intended to express if it contained full reality in the ordinary earthly sense. If every time we uttered a sentence we were obliged to work something heavy out of the mouth, we should be unable to express anything; it would rather be a matter of producing something. In this sense, what is spoken is not a reality in itself, but ‘signifies’ a reality, just as thoughts are not themselves a reality but merely signify a reality.

And if we consider the Good, then we shall find that what is formed through physical reality can never be called the Good. We must bring up from the depths of our being the impulse to Goodness, at first as something entirely unreal, and then make it a reality. If the impulse to Goodness were to arise like hunger, as an external reality, Goodness is just what it could not be. Again, when you are looking at a statue it does not occur to you to think that you can converse with it. It is merely semblance; and in the semblance something is made manifest, namely: Beauty. So that in Truth, reality is certainly indicated; but Truth itself moves in an element of unreality; and it is the same with Beauty, the same with Goodness.

It is therefore necessary for man that his thoughts are not, in themselves, real. Just imagine — if thoughts were to wander around in the head like leaden figures, then, to be sure, you would be aware of a reality, but these leaden thoughts would not be able to signify anything to you, they would be something real themselves. As truly as Thoughts, as the Beautiful and the Good too cannot be directly real, so it is also true that reality is necessary in this physical-earthly world in order that we can have Thoughts, make the Beautiful manifest in the world through art, and also bring the Good to fulfilment.

[elemental beings]

In speaking of this I come today to a domain of spiritual science which can lead us very deeply into the spirituality that is around us here on Earth and is essential for earthly existence, but completely withdrawn from the observation possible to the senses and hence cannot be grasped by the ordinary consciousness which depends, as you know, entirely upon physical perception. The fact is that we are surrounded everywhere by spiritual beings of the greatest possible variety, only the ordinary consciousness does not perceive them. Their existence is necessary in order that as human beings we may be able to unfold our faculties, to have thoughts in their chimerical lightness and evanescence, so that they are not present in our heads like leaden weights, are not something real in themselves, but can ‘signify’ reality.

For this it is necessary that there should be beings in the world who prevent our thoughts with their non-reality from immediately vanishing from us again. We men are really too cumbersome, too ponderous, to be able without more ado to hold fast our thoughts with the ordinary consciousness. Elemental beings must be there, beings who help us ever and again to hold fast our thoughts. Such elemental beings are indeed present, only they are extraordinarily hard to discover because they always conceal themselves.

[foolish ahrimanic elementals <-> gnomes]

When we ask: How does it really come about that we can hold fast a thought when it has no reality at all? Who is helping us to do this? .. even then it is very easy to be deceived, precisely when the matter is considered in the light of spiritual science. For at the very moment we begin to ask ourselves the question: by whom are thoughts held fast for men? through this very desire to know about the spirit-entities who hold thoughts fast, we are driven into the realm of the Ahrimanic beings; we plunge into the realm of these beings and very soon begin to believe — although it is of course a deceptive belief — that man must be supported by the Ahrimanic spirits in order to hold fast the thoughts, so that they shall not vanish the moment he grasps them. On this account, most people are — unconsciously — even grateful to the Ahrimanic beings for supporting them in their thinking.

But it is misplaced gratitude, for there is a whole kingdom of beings who support us in our thought-world particularly, and who are by no means Ahrimanic.

These beings are difficult to find in the spiritual world, even for well-trained vision. One finds them sometimes by observing a very clever man at work; if one watches such a man one can perceive that he actually has a volatile, fleeting band of followers. He does not go about alone but has a fugitive following of spiritual beings who do not belong to the Ahrimanic kingdom, but who have an altogether remarkable character. One first really learns to know these beings when one can observe those other beings who belong to the Ahrimanic realm, to the elemental kingdoms, and therefore are not perceptible to the eyes of the senses, who are at work when forms in nature, crystal forms, for example, arise. The activity of these beings underlies all form; you find them described in my Mystery Plays as beings who chisel and hammer out solid forms. If you think of the gnome-like beings in one of the Mystery Plays you have there the beings who produce forms. Now these beings are sly and crafty — as you can see from the way I have presented them in the Play — and they mock at the scanty intelligence possessed by men. Call to mind those scenes from the Mystery Play if they are known to you.

Now if we observe a really clever man and perceive how he may have a retinue consisting of a whole host of such beings as I have described, we find that these beings are despised by the gnome-spirits of the elemental world because they are clumsy and, above all, because they are terribly foolish. Foolishness is their main characteristic! And so it can be said that precisely the very cleverest people in the world, when we can observe them from this aspect, are followed by whole troops of ‘spirit-fools.’ It is as if these foolish spirits wanted to belong to someone. And they are greatly disdained by the beings who fashion and shape forms in nature in the way described in the Mystery Plays. We can therefore say: among the worlds unknown to begin with to ordinary consciousness, there is one that is peopled by a spirit-folk of ‘fools,’ fools who throng towards human wisdom and cleverness. In the present age these beings have actually no life of their own. They achieve a life by using the life of those who are dying, who are dying from illness but in whom life-forces are still present. These beings can only make use of a life that is past. Thus there are spirit-fools who use the life that remains over from men; they sate themselves with the life that lingers in cemeteries and such places.

It is when we penetrate into worlds like this that we realize how densely populated is the realm lying behind the world that is perceptible to the senses, how manifold are the classes of spirit-beings, and how closely connected these spirit-beings are with our faculties. A clever man pursuing his activities, who is merely clever and not clairvoyant, can hold fast his thoughts precisely through the fact that he is followed by this troop of spirit-fools. These spirit-fools rivet themselves to his thoughts, drag at them and give them weight, so that they remain with him, whereas otherwise they would quickly vanish from him.

These beings are, as I said, bitterly scoffed at by the gnome-like beings. The gnome-like beings will not tolerate them in their realm although they belong to it. The gnome-like beings drive the others away continually and there is a hard fight between the gnome-folk and this folk of spirit-fools through whom alone wisdom is made possible for man; otherwise the wisdom would be fugitive, would pass away the moment it came into existence, could not remain. As has been said, these beings are hard to discover because it is so easy to fall into the Ahrimanic sphere directly questions are asked about them. But one can find them on occasions such as I have just indicated, by observing very clever men who are followed by a whole troop of such beings. Apart from that, however, when there are not enough clever thoughts fastening on to men, these beings are to be found lingering, for example, in libraries — when the books contain clever material. When the contents of books are stupid these beings are not to be found; they are to be found only where there is cleverness. On that they rivet themselves.

This gives us some insight into a realm that surrounds us everywhere, that is present just as the Nature-kingdoms are present, that has something to do with our faculties, but is very difficult to assess. If we wish to do that we must rely upon those gnome-like beings and set some store by their judgment — and they, in fact, consider the other beings stupid and impudent.

But these other beings have yet another characteristic. When they are too severely persecuted by the gnome-like beings they escape into human heads, and whereas outside in nature they are almost giants — of an enormous size — they become quite tiny when they are inside men's heads. One could say that they are an abnormal species of nature-spirits, who are, however, intimately connected with the whole of human evolution on the Earth.

[feelings of beauty - air/water - ugly elementals <-> sylph elementals of nature]

Beings of another kind live chiefly in the watery and airy elements, just as do those beings described in the Mystery Plays as the sylph-like beings. The beings to whom I am now referring have chiefly to do with the world of ‘beautiful semblance.’ They attach themselves less to men who are clever in the ordinary sense than to those who are genuinely artistic in nature. But these beings too are very hard to discover as they can so easily conceal themselves. They are to be found where there are genuine works of art, where, for instance, the human form or forms of nature and so forth are portrayed in semblance. There they are to be found.

These beings too, as I said, can only be discovered with difficulty. When, for instance, we ask: How is it that beautiful semblance interests us, that there are occasions when we derive greater pleasure from a beautiful statue than from a living person (true, it is a different kind of pleasure, but for all that, greater), or that we are edified and delighted by melodies or harmonies? When we ask ourselves this we very easily fall into a different realm, into the realm of the Luciferic beings.

It is not only the Luciferic beings who promote enthusiasm for art, but again there is a kingdom of elemental beings by whom interest in art is stimulated and kept alive in man. Without such beings, man would never be disposed to take an interest in beautiful semblance, simply because it is unreal.

Now the reason why it is so difficult to discover these beings is because they can conceal themselves even more easily than the spirit-fools, for they are actually only present where beauty makes its power felt.

And when we are wrapt in enjoyment of the beautiful, then we certainly do not see these beings. Why is this?

In order to get a sight of them in a normal way, we must endeavor, while given up in some way to artistic impressions, to direct clairvoyant vision to the beings who are depicted in the same scene in the Mystery Play as nymph- or sylph-like beings; these beings too belong to the elemental Nature-kingdoms, and we must project ourselves into them. We must, as it were, look with these air- and water-beings at the others who are present whenever joy is taken in beauty. And as this is difficult, we must turn to other means of help. Now fortunately it is easy to discover these beings when we are listening to someone who speaks beautifully and whose language we do not properly understand; when we hear only the sounds without understanding the meaning. If we then abandon ourselves to the experience of this beautiful speaking — but it must be really beautiful speaking, genuine oratory, and we must not be able to understand it properly — then we can acquire the faculty, intimate and delicate as it is, of seeing these beings.

Thus we must try, as it were, to acquire the talent of the sylphs and to strengthen it through the talent that unfolds when we listen to beautiful speech without endeavoring to understand the meaning but having ears only for its beauty. Then we discover the beings who are present wherever beauty is and lend their support so that man can have a true interest in it.

And then follows the disillusionment, the great and terrible surprise. For these beings are in fact hideously ugly, the very ugliest that can be imagined; they are ghastly creatures, the very archetypes of ugliness. And if we have developed the requisite spiritual vision and visit some studio where artistic work is being done, we find that it is these beings who are present on Earth, like spiders on the ground of world-existence, in order that men may take interest in beauty. It is through these frightful spider-creatures of an elemental order that interest in beauty really awakens. Man simply could not have the right interest in beauty if in his life of soul he were not entangled in a world of hideously ugly spider-like beings.

When they are going through a gallery, people have no inkling — for what I have said refers only to discovering the form of these beings, who are always present when anyone is delighting in beauty — people have no inkling of how they are strengthened in the interest they take in beautiful pictures by having these hideous spider-like creatures creeping in and out of their ears and nostrils.

Man's enthusiasm for what is beautiful arises on the foundation of ugliness. That is a cosmic secret, my dear friends. The spur of ugliness is needed in order that the beautiful may be made manifest. And the greatest artists were men who because of their strong bodily constitution could endure the invasions of these spidery beings in order to produce, let us say, a Sistine Madonna, or the like. Whatever beauty is brought forth in the world has been lifted out of a sea of ugliness through the enthusiasm in the human soul.

Let it not be thought that behind the veil of the material world, in the region beyond the threshold, we come into a realm of pure beauty. Do not imagine that anyone who is cognizant of these things speaks lightheartedly when he says that if men are not properly prepared they must be held back at the threshold of the spiritual world. For it is essential first of all to know the thoroughly unedifying foundations of all that in front of the curtain as it were, is uplifting and edifying.

Therefore if with spiritual sight we move about the elemental world belonging to air and water, again we see the great battle waging between the fleeting sylphs and undines and these archetypes of ugliness. Although I spoke of the latter as spidery creatures, the tissues of which they are formed are not like those of spiders as we know them, but they are composed of the elements of water and watery vapor. They are volatile air-formations, the ugliness of which is enhanced inasmuch as every second they have a different ugliness; each succeeding ugliness gives the impression of being even worse than its predecessor. This world is present in air and water together with everything that is delightful there.

[Good]

And now in order that man may unfold enthusiasm for the good, something else takes place. It can be said of the other beings that they are more or less actually there, but in the case of the beings of whom I am now going to speak it must really be said that they are continually coming into existence, whenever, in fact, a Man has within him warmth of feeling for goodness. It is in this warmth that these beings develop; their nature itself is warm and fiery; they live in the present but their inherent nature is similar to what I have described in the book Outline of Esoteric Science in connection with the Old Saturn-existence of man.

As man was in the Old Saturn-existence, so are these beings today. Their form is not the same but their nature is similar. It cannot be said of them that they are beautiful or ugly, or anything of that kind; they must be judged in comparison with the ordinary elemental warmth-beings who, as you know, also exist. All spiritual research in this sphere is extraordinarily difficult. It is very difficult to approach the beings who live entirely in warmth, that is to say, in ‘fire’ in the old sense, and when one does come upon them it is not very pleasant. One comes upon them, for instance, when lying in a high fever, but then as a rule one is not a really objective observer. Otherwise it is a matter of developing the requisite faculty for perceiving these warmth-beings by elaborating the methods indicated in my books. These warmth-beings have a certain relationship with the beings who appear, for instance, when a man has warm enthusiasm for the good, but the relationship is of a very peculiar kind. I will assume hypothetically — for only in that way can I describe these things — that warmth-beings of the normal kind are present, originating in man's physical warmth, which as you know is greater than the warmth of the environment. Man has his own warmth, hence these particular beings are near him. And now, in a man who has enthusiasm for the Good these other beings make themselves manifest; they too are warmth-beings, but of a different kind. When they are in the neighbourhood of the normal fire-beings they immediately draw back from them and slip into the inmost recesses of man's nature. If one then makes great efforts to discover their essential characteristics in contrast to those of the normal warmth-beings, one finds that they have an inner, but very pronounced, bashfulness. They refuse absolutely to be observed by other beings of the spiritual world, and flee from them because they are ashamed of being seen; they flee first and foremost into the inmost nature of man. Hence they are hard to discover. Actually they are only to be discovered if we observe ourselves in certain moments that it is really not so very easy to bring about at will. Just suppose that in spite of not being in the least sentimental we are moved to tears simply by reading a scene in a book that grips us deeply and dramatically. Some great and good action is described, let us say, in a novel. If we have the power of self-observation we can discover how whole hosts of such beings (who have such delicate sensibility that they do not want to be seen by any other beings of the spiritual world) flee into our heart, into our breast, how they come to us, how they seek protection from the other warmth-beings and in fact from any other beings of the elemental spiritual worlds.

There is a significant force of repulsion between the normal warmth-beings and these other warmth beings with their intense bashfulness who live only in the sphere of man's moral life and who flee from contact with other spirit-beings. These beings are present in far greater numbers than is usually imagined and it is they who imbue man with enthusiasm for the morally good. Man would not readily acquire this enthusiasm for the morally good if these beings did not come to his aid; and when a man loves the moral, he has a real bond, an unconscious bond, with these beings.

Certain of their characteristics are such as may lead us to misunderstand this whole kingdom. For after all, why do these beings feel bashful and ashamed? It is actually because all the other beings in the elemental kingdoms of the spiritual world in which they live, disdain them, will have nothing to do with them. They are aware of this and the disdain to which they are subjected causes them to stimulate enthusiasm for the Good.

These beings have certain other characteristics of which I do not care to speak, for the human soul is so obviously upset at any mention of such hideous spidery creatures. I therefore prefer not to refer to certain of their peculiarities.

[Summary]

But at any rate we have heard how what unfolds in the realm of the senses as the True, the Beautiful, the Good, unfolds from foundations which need the three spiritual kingdoms I have described, just as we on Earth need the ground on which we walk. These beings do not create the True, the Beautiful or the Good.

• But the thoughts which express the True, signify the True, need the spirit-dunderheads, so that they may move on their shoulders.
• The Beautiful that man produces needs the ugly water- and air-spiders so that it can raise itself out of this ocean of ugliness.
• And the Good needs a kingdom of beings who cannot show themselves at all among the other normal warmth-beings, who must always fight shy of them, and for this very reason evoke enthusiasm for the Good.

If these beings did not exist, then instead of thoughts in our heads we should have, if not exactly leaden soldiers, at least heavy vapors and nothing clever could possibly result. In order to produce the Beautiful we should need to have the gift of imbuing it with actual life in order that men's interest might be aroused. In order that here, in the world of the senses, there may be at hand what we need for the activity of thought, for the sense of beauty, for the will to arouse enthusiasm for the good — for this, three such elemental kingdoms are necessary.

[Evolutionary perspective]

The normal elemental kingdoms — that is, the kingdoms of the gnomes, sylphs, undines and salamanders, to use folk-terminology — are still at the stage of striving to become something in the world. They are on the way to having forms resembling those in our sense-world; the forms will not be the same, but one day they will become perceptible to the senses possessed by men today, whereas now, in their elementary existence, these beings are not perceptible to the ordinary senses.

The beings I have now described to you have in fact already by-passed the stage at which men and animals and plants are today.

So that if, for example, we were able to go back to the Old Moon stage which preceded the Earth, we should there encounter the beings found on Earth today as the bashful beings connected with moral impulses in man. On the Old Moon they would have been perceptible as a real animal world, spinning as it were from tree to tree. But you must call to mind the Old Moon-existence as I have described it in the book Outline of Esoteric Science. Everything in this Moon-existence was pliable and fluid and metamorphosis has continually taken place. Among the beings there, spinning in and out, were those hideous beings I have described, those spidery creatures permeating the Old Moon and visible there. And there were also present the beings who as spirit-fools accompany the wise on the Earth today. They were a factor in bringing about the destruction of the Old Moon, so that the Earth could arise. And even now, during Earth-existence, these beings have no pleasure in the formation of crystals, but rather in the breaking up of everything mineral.

Thus while we can say of the normal elemental beings that they will one day become visible to the senses, we must say of these other beings: once upon a time they were visible to the senses and have now sprung over into the spiritual — admittedly through their Luciferic and Ahrimanic natures. Thus there are two kinds of elemental beings — ascending and descending. We can say: on the ‘dung’ of Old Moon ugliness — which was there in profusion during the Old Moon-existence — on the ‘dung’ of Old Moon ugliness, our world of beauty springs forth.

You have an analogy in Nature when you carry manure to the fields and beautiful plants spring from it. There you have an analogy in Nature except that the dung, the manure, is also perceptible to the senses. So it is when the half-reality of the world of beauty is observed clairvoyantly. Try to envisage this half-real world of beauty, quite apart from the teeming life in the three kingdoms of Nature on the Earth; picture all the beautiful after-effects springing from the Earth. Just as lovely flowers spring up in a meadow, you must spiritually picture underneath it all the Moon-dung which contains the ugly spidery creatures I have described. Just as cabbage does not grow unless it is manured, as little can beauty blossom on the Earth unless the Gods manure the Earth with ugliness. That is the inner necessity of life. And this inner necessity of life must be known to us, for such knowledge alone can give us the power to confront with understanding what actually surrounds us in Nature.

Anyone who believes that beauty in art can be produced on Earth without the foundation of this ugliness is like a man who is horrified that people use manure, insisting that it would be far better to let beautiful things grow without it. — In point of fact it is not possible for beauty to be produced without the foundation of ugliness. And if people do not want to give themselves up to illusion about the world, that is, if they genuinely desire to know the essential and not the illusory, then they must acquire knowledge of these things. Whoever believes that there is art in the world without ugliness does not know what art is. And why not? Simply for the reason that only he who has an inkling of what I have described to you today will enjoy works of art in the right way, for he knows at what cost they are purchased in world-existence. Whoever wants to enjoy works of art without this consciousness is like a man who would prefer to do away with manure on the fields. Such a man has no real knowledge of what grows in Nature; he has, in fact, merely an illusion before him — plants of papier-maché, although real plants are actually there. Whoever does not feel ugliness as the foundation has not the right kind of delight in beauty.

Such is the world-order and men must acquire knowledge of it if they do not want to go on wandering about like earthworms, keeping to their own element and not looking upwards to what is real. Men can only develop the talents latent within them if they confront reality fairly and squarely. Reality, however, is not attained merely by talking time and time again of spirit, spirit, spirit, but by really coming to know the spiritual. But the fact has also to be faced that in certain regions of the spiritual world something like I have been describing to you today will be encountered.

1923-01-19-GA220

lecture: 'Truth, Beauty and Goodness in Relation to Physical, Etheric and Astral Bodies and with Past, Present and Future'

True, the Beautiful, the Good—through all the ages of man's conscious evolution these words have expressed three great ideals: ideals which have instinctively been recognized as representing the sublime nature and lofty goal of all human endeavour. In epochs earlier than our own there was a deeper knowledge of man's being and his connection with the universe, when Truth, Beauty and Goodness had more concrete reality than they have in our age of abstraction. Anthroposophy, or spiritual science, is able once again to indicate the concrete reality of such ideals, although in so doing it does not always meet with the approval of the times. For in our age men love to be vague and nebulous whenever it is a question of getting beyond the facts of everyday life.

Let us try to understand how Truth, Beauty and Goodness are related, as concrete realities, to the being of Man.

[on truth]

As the human being stands before us we see, in the first place, his physical body—nowadays the object of purely external observation. How the single organs, the form and functions of the body have been built up in pre-earthly existence—of this people are wholly unaware. In his pre-earthly existence man lives in a world of pure Spirit, where, in communion with higher Beings, he is engaged in building up the spiritual prototype, the spirit-form of his physical body. The physical body here on earth is but an after-copy of the spirit-germ that is elaborated, in a certain sense, by man himself in pre-earthly existence.

In earthly life the human being is conscious of his physical body, but does not know what this implies. We speak of Truth, little realizing that a feeling for truth is connected with our consciousness of the physical body. When man is confronted by a simple fact, he may either form an idea that harmonizes strictly with it and thus is true, or, from inaccuracy, laziness or positive aversion to truth, he may evolve an idea that does not coincide with the fact. When he thinks the truth, he is in harmony with the feeling he has of his physical body, nay also with his sense of the connection between this physical body and pre-earthly existence. If out of laziness or untruthfulness he forms an idea that is not in accordance with the fact, it is as if he cut the thread that binds him to pre-earthly existence. Untruth severs this thread. In pre-earthly existence a delicate spiritual wool is spun, and this is concentrated into an after-copy—the physical body. Many threads connect this physical body with pre-earthly existence, and they are severed by untruthfulness. The purely intellectual consciousness that is a characteristic quality in the early stages of the epoch of the Spiritual Soul (see Note 1) does not realize that such a severance takes place. And that is why man is subject to so many illusions as to his connection with cosmic existence.

For the most part today, man regards his bodily health from a purely physical point of view. But when, through untruthfulness, he severs the threads that bind him with pre-earthly existence, this works right down into his physical body, and especially into the constitution of the nervous system. The feeling he has of his physical body gives him his “spiritual sense of being” in the universe. And this spiritual sense of being depends upon maintenance of the threads proceeding from the physical body to pre-earthly existence. If they break, man must create a substitute for his healthy sense of being—and he does so, unconsciously. He is then led, unconsciously, to ascribe to himself a sense of being “out of the common.” But even here he has fallen into an inner uncertainty that makes itself felt even in the physical body. For this purely spiritual sense of being that we find existing with greater and greater intensity the farther we go back in history—is it strongly present in man to-day?

How often it is the case that a man would like to be a person of note not by virtue of his own spiritual life, but by virtue of some profession or title. He likes to have some such title as “secretary” or “notary,” and then imagines he is of importance when convention thus describes him. The essential thing, however, is that he shall be able to realize his existence inwardly, apart from all externalities.

What is it that can strengthen Man in this sense of being? In earthly existence we live in a world that is but a copy of true reality. Indeed, we only understand this physical world aright when we realize it to be this copy of reality. It behooves us, however, to feel the true reality within us; we must be aware of our connection with the spiritual world. And this is only possible if the bond that links us with pre-earthly existence remains intact.

This bond is strengthened by a love of truth and integrity. Nothing establishes man's true and original sense of existence so firmly as a feeling for truth and truthfulness. To feel himself in duty bound first to “prove all things” he utters, to set due restraint on all his words—this helps to consolidate the sense of existence that is worthy of his being. To be aware of the spirit within the physical body—with this, indeed, the sense of being is connected. There is, in effect, an intimate kinship between the physical body and this ideal of Truth.

Related pages

• Virtues
• Moral ideals
• Thinking Feeling Willing

References and further reading

• Rudolf Steiner
  • 'Truth, beauty and goodness' (1986 in EN, 1927 first edition in DE; original title Wahrheit, Schönheit, Güte)
  • 'Schöpfen aus dem Nichts : Wahrheit, Schönheit, Güte' (2008) (lectures from GA107, GA219, GA220)
  • 'Waarheid, schoonheid, goedheid; Geloof, liefde, hoop : drie stadia van het leven der mensheid' (1984 in NL)
• Gilbert Childs: Truth, Beauty, and Goodness: Steiner-Waldorf Education as a Demand of Our Time: An Esoteric Study (1999)
• Sigismund von Gleich: 'Zur Freiheit durch die Schönheit : Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen von Friedrich von Schiller in Umschreibungen' (1945 as 'Die Selbsterziehung des Menschen' and again 1987)